About this Book

 

It is inevitable that there is Man(Saram) between Sky(Haneul) and Earth(Tang) whenever the both are given because they are to be divided from one entirety as Man(Saram) exists. Everything that changes relatively, i.e. that has no shape on itself is refered to by the name of Haneul(Sky), while everything that is fixed relatively, i.e. that has concrete figure about itself is refered to by the name of Tang(Earth). These categories can be divided such like that only based on the subjective that distinguishes, which belongs to the category of Saram(Man). This distinguishing subjective is a will as intending to do something.

TAEKWONDO is not exceptional that it is also composed of these three materials(Samjae), and it is important that you should always keep yourself as what you are without being biased to an extremity in a battle against your opponent, which is the third principle, called "the way of Saram(Man)". Another people have said of this the knowing yourself, or the keeping to your sphere, or the golden mean. To say differently, the way of Saram(Man) in Taekwondo is to return immediately to a settled pose which is the core of each motion of yours in perfect balance despite endless changes and motions, or to make your position firm staying in your complete balance and stability.

You as a Taekwondo man, who follows the way of Saram, should alway keep yourself in enough training and intense preparation so that you never lose your own way at any moment of Kyorugi.¹⁾ It is a sort of realm of your life. You can be confident since you can control over everything in the realm, and so you never lose predominance over others at all since you include others in the realm. After you broadened the possibility of your position-keeping infinitely you can rather erase the predominance and get everything relying on the opponent's motion. This is possible because only after you know existence of your 'I' first you can know nonexistence of the 'I'. It is essential for life that every living thing manages all of its process and activity in order to save itself, and man is a life, and therefore, the way of Saram is naturally closest to the figure of life among those three(Samjae).

A plant begins as a seed and makes its roots and leaves, blooming a flower, then ends up as a fruit, which contains many seeds again. All of these changes are due to that all of them, i.e. a seed, a big tree and everything else, are nothing but a kind of plant breathing together with the whole nature from the deep root and many leaves. Otherwise, a seed would spoil to be a mere piece and a big tree would be nothing more than a lump of wood. They would stop changes of a life, growing no more.

Through all of these temporal processes the core is its "being a plant", and in space the core is the earth where it roots. The strongness and weakness can be only in such being alive, and the strongness is not different from a life's growing. This is the form of a change of everything. The principle of Taekwondo is same with that of Nature.

The core, referred in the way of Saram(Man), means your own perfect pose which allows most possibility to adapt yourself to each situation. It is the true figure of each Taekwondo man. You should return to your core naturally and immediately from each movement. This implies that you don't leave your core, but just extend yourself to various figures contracting yourself back to the core.

Since this core is each man's figure of practicing Taekwondo it is not fixed at all while it will be determined by the relation of your and your opponent's motions, weapons, distance and so on. This fact is due to that you make endless change in nature. Since, however, this principle is no more than an aspect of Taekwondo and everybody cannot but follow its right principle it is fixed in abstract level.

The structure of this change lies in everything changing that man conceives intentionally. Let's take a toytop for an example. Since the toytop will be troubled in its spinning with its swaying core when it spins, its core that manages each change should be stable and firm. Once its core were stable and firm it could spin on any place and stand in any situation.

As each part of the toytop turns swiftly back to its core your motion should turn back to your core, i.e. to your balanced pose and position swiftly. Only the core of change can link a change to another naturally. Accordingly, whenever you kick you should drop your foot down right away back to the original pose, which makes the next skill possible naturally and swiftly. All the same with techniques of hands.

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